


Metamorphosis

by lrhaboggle



Category: Carmilla - All Media Types, Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: Butterfly, F/F, Metamorphosis, Moon, Musing, No Plot, Philosophy, Rambling, Stream of Consciousness, change, phase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 04:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lrhaboggle/pseuds/lrhaboggle
Summary: Carmilla and Laura muse on the concept of change, phases and metamorphosis and Laura can't help but wonder if Carmilla's attraction to her stems from her own personal metamorphosis. But if that were the case, what was it that Carmilla saw in her? (Just philisophical ramblings, no plot).





	Metamorphosis

"Do you think," Laura asked, "That you will ever confide fully in me?" Carmilla smiled at her, but she made no verbal reply.

"You won't even answer that?" Laura sighed, both at Carmilla and herself. "Of course. You can't answer pleasantly. I ought not to have asked you," the blond shook her head in irritation and disappointment both when Carmilla refused to answer any of her questions, even though such a response, or lack thereof, was totally normal from the mysterious young woman.

"You were quite right to ask me that, or anything," Carmilla replied at last, taking pity on Laura. "You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for," she looked at Laura in earnest, but then, her face took up a more mysterious expression.

"But I am under vows no nun half so awfully could imagine. I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. But the time is very near when you shall know all. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish. The more ardent, the more selfish. How jealous I am, you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death, or else hate me and still come with me, hating me through death and after!" Carmilla finished, voice having gotten deeper and stronger the longer she spoke. The two were sitting together in Carmilla's bed, which was in the largest guestroom of Laura's schloss, and Carmilla was sitting up straighter and taller as she spoke, more animated with every second.

"Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again," Laura said hastily, sensing this oncoming change within Carmilla and fearing it. It would not be the first time Carmilla had spoken such fancies and frightened Laura a little with them. It was like she became an entirely different person in those moments and Laura still was not sure what to make of it. She tried to lower Carmilla back into the bed and calm her.

"Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies," Carmilla gave Laura an unreadable smile as she let Laura soothe her. Then something akin to pity flickered in her dark eyes. "For your sake, I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?"

"No. What is it like? How charming it must be!" Laura was still concerned that Carmilla might be about to lose herself to another strange bout of insanity again, but any chance to learn the young woman's mysterious past was one Laura was willing to take.

"I almost forget, it was years ago," Carmilla replied, a distant look entering her dark eyes again.

"You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet!" Laura replied, unable to stop a small laugh. Although she did not know Carmilla's exact age, Laura guessed that it was around her own: 18 or 19. But Carmilla only shrugged, Laura's jest seeming to go right over her head.

"I remember everything about it," the young woman said at last. "But with an effort. I see it all, but it is fragmented. It is like looking through the broken glass of a picture frame at my past. Or it is as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense and rippling, but transparent..." Carmilla trailed off for a moment before continuing. "That night was confused, its colors made faint. All I remember clearly was that I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded right here," she touched her breast. "I was never the same since."

"Were you very near dying?" Laura asked, voice hushed with a mix of awe and fear. Carmilla nodded a little.

"Yes, very. It was a cruel love, a strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood..."

"But you are here now," Laura interrupted again as Carmilla began to speak of blood and sacrifice. "You were not killed that night. You are alive! You are still here!" now Laura didn't know if she was trying harder to reassure herself, or Carmilla. This talk of blood, sacrifice and assassination was frightening the young blond and she was trying to pull Carmilla back away from such a dark and foreboding topic.

"Perhaps I am," Carmilla acknowledged, but it almost sounded as if she only half-believed that.

"I feel myself a changed girl now..." Carmilla continued. She was unconsciously rubbing the place where she had been wounded.

"But it's just a phase!" Laura insisted. "Your troubles will pass eventually, I promise!" the young woman reached out to touch her companion's arm. "You know my father is a doctor! If there is anything that ails you, in body or mind, he and I can help you recover!" Laura was trying to offer up her solace now that Carmilla was finally opening up to her, but Carmilla only shook her head with a gentle, unreadable smile again.

"Do not be too sure. Besides, do you think that erases anything either way?" she asked. The question was almost hostile, but the voice with which Carmilla asked it was anything but. She was genuinely interested in Laura's own thoughts.

"What do you mean?" Laura replied, confused. She drew her hand away from Carmilla's arm.

"I am saying," said Carmilla. "That even if that event was only one short night in my history, already almost erased from my memory by time, the effects of that night have lived on. Maybe that was only one silly little phase, but life itself is nothing more than a series of phases and changes. They come one right after another, like an endless march to some distance world... Life is ever-changing and each phase, no matter how small, is still impactful because, even if it is in the past, there was a time it affected our present and our present is the path we walk to the future! Now, what I mean is, to ask you, Laura, do you honestly think that the ball, even being one silly little passing phase, is insignificant? Negligible?"

Carmilla almost seemed to be talking to herself now, but Laura knew that the young woman was still addressing her.

"Maybe all of my troubles were only phases, long-gone now, but I had to go through each and every one of them to become who I am today. After all, in order to find out who you will be, you must first lose yourself in who you are. That can only happen if you accept that things change and that every event in life has its significance, no matter how small or short. Is life itself any less important even though it is, in a sense, shorter than a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things?" Carmilla paused with a mildly sadistic smile that looked eerie in the candlelight that dimly illuminated the guestroom. "Realize that on a larger scale, life itself is little more than a phase, but no one would deny the innate value of life."

"Perhaps you are right," Laura allowed at last, unsure of what else to say and feeling awkward as the silence between them carried on. Carmilla only gave her another almost pitying look and Laura felt a wave of self-consciousness wash over her.

"Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes," Carmilla said next. "But in the meantime, they are grubs and larvae. Don't you see? Each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room," the young woman pointed with her dainty chin towards where Laura's master library would be. "Ours is a life of metamorphosis. Perhaps that ball truly was only one phase in my life, and one that I most certainly exit out of eventually, but does that mean it means any less to me? Or in the grand scheme of things? Hmm? What say you, Laura?" Carmilla continued to gently prod her companion, genuinely curious.

"Perhaps," Laura repeated, but she still seemed uncertain.

"Listen!" Carmilla continued to talk. "In the same way a larva must become a caterpillar which must become a butterfly, so too must every man and woman alive go through a metamorphosis in order to live and grow fully. There is never one finite or definitive ending to a story. The game is constantly changing. Even though we consider the butterfly to be the final stage, butterflies do not cease to grow and age. Perhaps the changes are more subtle, more stable, but they still exist! The very essence of life is founded in diversity, which is development and difference. Stagnancy and finality exist only in the mind, because even death has its own phases... Nothing is finite and everything changes, always. The butterfly is no more the end of the cycle of phases than the corpse is!"

"And the moon!" Carmilla seemed feverish now and Laura began to grow worried, but she couldn't bring herself to tear away from Carmilla or interrupt just yet. "That celestial metamorphosis! Every night is a new phase, each with its own peculiarities, but not a single one goes uncounted or unnoticed! We know all the moon's phases! We have then written down to study whenever we please!" Carmilla's dark eyes then shifted over to a book on the guestroom's nightstand, right beside the candle. It was an astronomy book. Carmilla had read it all, but she had spent the most time on the section that talked about the moon. There was something so mysterious, and almost magical, about the moon, that it made perfect sense for one such as Carmilla to find a strange kinship with it.

And there was already so much lore about the moon, particularly when relating to the supernatural and the mind, that it came as small wonder to Laura that Carmilla would've found fascination with the subject. The moon was a very magical, celestial object, just as mysterious as Carmilla herself. They were very much alike, weren't they? But, now, maybe there wasn't much regarding the moon's mystical side within that particular textbook, but at the very least, as Carmilla had just stated, the book talked about the moon's phases and how every little last one was noted and measured, recorded and valued. All the moon's phases were accepted and validated and the moon was always recognized as the moon, no matter what phase it was in at the present time. Of course Carmilla would find a strange solace in such a fact. Of course, someone as strange as she would find it comforting know that the moon was always considered the moon, even if it looked different every night.

"Are you a caterpillar or a butterfly?" Laura asked suddenly. "A full moon, or a half or a new one?" perhaps it was a peculiar question, but Carmilla's philosophizing was infectious and now Laura was getting swept away too, wanting to know where Carmilla fell on this chronological spectrum of life. Carmilla may have appeared to be like Laura, a girl and a grub, but in moments like this, Laura felt as though she was looking at someone far older and wiser than she could ever imagine. In moments like this, Carmilla seemed more a butterfly than a larva. But once more, Laura was left only with a cryptic reply.

"Who can say?" Carmilla asked. "I have had many years of life before and I suspect that I shall have many more," Carmilla flashed another almost sadistic smile. "There is plenty of room for me to change again, so who can say what stage of metamorphosis we are in now? And does it matter? More will come and go, regardless, but that is just life... It is just another phase in a long string of phases in an endless round... The moon, the caterpillars, they all have their phases, and so do we."

Laura wanted to reply, but Carmilla had floored her again and she could only shake her head, mouth open slightly but no sound coming out. Suddenly, the candle on the nightstand began to sputter. Laura jumped slightly as the shadows danced on the wall.

"Never mind," Laura said at last. "It is late. I should go to bed..." Laura crept out of the room then, an uncomfortable sensation running down her back as she left, in the place right between her shoulder blades, behind her heart. And Carmilla watched her go even after she was gone. Was Carmilla studying Laura's metamorphosis? If so, what did she see in Laura?

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This is literally just part of the book combined with some rather insightful quotes an acquaintance of mine once left me with. It's basically a stream of consciousness regarding Carmilla's speech about butterflies and my acquaintance's thoughts about phases/changes.
> 
> In particular, she was talking about how, sometimes, older relatives tell their younger queer ones that being queer is "just a phase". Her point was that even if such a claim were true, which it usually isn't, that still shouldn't invalidate the queer person's feelings. Even if being queer was always a passing phase in the life of a teenager, it was still integral to someone's identity at at least some point in time and it should never be disparaged or ignored, even if it is only a temporal identity. (Because, like Carmilla said, if you think about it, life itself is a temporal identity. No one is immortal. But no one would ever look at a whole life and say, "Oh! It's just a phase! You'll grow out of it!")
> 
> I even referenced a Tumblr post about queer "phases" when Carmilla points out how no one looks at the moon, sees it in a different phase, and then claims "Oh, that's not the moon anymore!". It was a reference to how a bi/pan person is still a bi/pan person regardless of the sex/gender of the person they are currently interested in. And partly a reference to my acquaintance's remark about how all phases of a person's life are valid, regardless of timespan (like the butterflies). And queerness usually isn't a phase. In this case, it might be analogous to the idea that your friend is still your friend even after they come out as queer. Your child is still your child, even if they come out as gay. They aren't suddenly going to change just because they like people of the same sex. Same with the moon. 
> 
> Anyway, just a short little ramble about Carmilla and metamorphosis. There's no real plot here. Just thoughts that I wanted to post.


End file.
